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Show LEW Bl'RNET Bit been entased by TOM ARNOLD, owner of the Cron T, to act at trail boss on the drive from southern Texas to Otallala In the spring ol 1875. Tom, with hli ion and daurbtrr, STEVE and JOY, are movlnf to Wyoming. Wyo-ming. Tom must deliver 3,000 loniborns to the Indian agent by September 1, or toie a profitable contract Lew hai reason rea-son to believe that the Indian Supply Co. Is trying to delay the Croti T herd. Lew brines the herd successfully to the bank of the Red river, where they must wait for lower water to cross. Lew ridel to Doan'i store where he finds out that the Indians are being stirred up, and that the Indian Supply Co.'i Open A herd has not yet crossed. p CHAPTER IX Clay Manning stood up and went to the pit and kicked another log onto the blaze. It was a restless act; the brief upward glow caught the irritation on his lace. With all the other men quieted by a good meal something was driving this big blond and wouldn't let him rest. He swung back almost as if a hand had erinnflrt hl ahniilrtor and turned him with a sudden violence. "It's my guard, Lew. I'm going out. The others needn't come till they're ready." "Plenty of time," he said. "Take it easy." But Clay's huge plunging gait was carrying him on. He got up and followed, urged by quick, yet unshaped suspicion. "Wait a minute." He caught up off in the decreasing light. There was no heat in him, only a dull outrage against this man who had so much and was using it so badly. He could still see Joy's look, grave and strange and sweet, promising all that woman could promise, and yet Clay could go on in his bullheaded secret way surely toward some kind of ruin. "There's four men out now," he said. Moonlight and Splann had not come in. "Why are you going, Clay?" The answer came in a surly growl "There's a storm blowing up. You can see that yourself." He could, but that wasn't it. He waited, letting his eyes probe through the dim light and seeing the ruddy face turn more and more strained with its controlled temper. tem-per. He let his words drop quietly. "Yes. If that was alL What is It?" "What else do you think?" "I think you'd better use your head. Clay, wake up! You haven't covered your tracks so much. You've left a trail ever since we started . . . and it's crooked as the devil!" T t n. i i i ' a i j iic saw viay i ruuumess nuuu sua-denly sua-denly dark, and then that color ebbed and all the loose lines of his face were drawn tight. Something charged and desperate was like a strong force held violently inside him. Joy was coming toward them. "Lew." She nodded him aside and raised her hands against Clay's chest. "You can't go now! Aren't you going to dance with me? Owl-Head Owl-Head promised to play his fiddle . . . after the show." She laughed; her hands gave him a quick pat. "Now you come on!" She pulled him back to her wagon and raised her arms for him to lift her inside. A keg made a seat in front of the low cabinet organ. The bellows wheezed, pumping in air, and then she pressed out a long chord. Charley Storms' muffled voice came from beneath the chuck-wagon canvas. She changed at once into the "Blue Danube Waltz." The wagon flaps parted. Neal and Charley jumped out into the firelight, fire-light, joined hands and curtsied. In waltz time they began to dance with each other, coyly, like those girls of Kate's, teasing the men. Young Jim Hope took it with a j whoop. Lew watched the older men's 1 faces. They were not remembering . that Joy Arnold had never seen men go it at Rowdy Kate's. j Then he saw Clay start toward ' her, his face angered. But when he reached her wagon she laughed him aside. She finished the waltz, and as she dropped her hands from the keys, still flushed and shaking with that laughter, there came a far-off clapping across the sky like applause from some distant audience. Someone said, "Listen! Thunder." The next instant, as if that thunderclap thunder-clap had been a signal, he caught the repeated spurts of light low down on the earth, even before the rattle of guns reached him. His horse was close to camp and he was first in the saddle, with the others delayed in running out to their picketed animals. Alone, he plunged into the night's blackness. There had been no more shooting after that ragged volley. No more was needed. It had Jumped the four thousand longhorns in a single startled star-tled mass. Slow and awkward as they looked, they could outdistance even a good horse tor a little while in any sudden fright. He could only follow them, guided by the rattling drumbeat of their pllt hoofs. Eeyond the creek they had continued con-tinued running straight. He could feel the Tat, unbroken land and judged they were aimed along the shelf between the low hills and the river. Riding loose, giving the animal ani-mal beneath him every chance to keep on Its feet, he waited tor ertatn time. Running was not utural pact for cattle When the drumbeat fell Into the longer rhythm of a gallop he knew they were tiring. tir-ing. Slowly he began to overtake the rear that was like a dark wave rolling on In front of him. He had forgotten the storm. If there had been another thunderclap it was drowned by the rattling jar in his ears. A crooked flash close in front of the longhorns was his first warning. Against Its while light all of the widespread herd stood out briefly, caught In tossing waves, gone too soon for him to locate any rider. Someone was close before he heard the pounding thud of hoofs. Then the rider was alongside, Jim Hope's high young voice yelling, "Lew!" "All right." he yelled back. "Any more coming?" "Somewhere. What you want me to do?" "Swing off and stay clear! Don't ride too close." He was alone again, holding his own running pace beside the herd. Suddenly Ills horse snorted, spread his legs, and stopped. Their growling complaint hnd risen now above the clack of horns and hoofs. It was like sounds jolted out of them at every lumbering step. They were tired and yet the mass fright drove them on. Gradually he worked forward and thought he must be near the front, when up ahead the galloping rhythm broke. There was nothing for him to see on the black earth. But his horse dug in suddenly, trying to stop, let himself go and leaped. The tall was long and they struck hard. The saddle horn rammed his stomach. It bent him over as the horse lunged on up a steep bank. It was a little time, running on again with the breath knocked out of him, before he could look for the cattle. He turned his head and saw them beneath the lightning's repeated repeat-ed flashes, pouring Into a narrow gulley and wiggling out like worms. He looked for Jim Hope and couldn't find him. He started to wheel back. A split bunch of longhorns cut him oft. The gulley had broken up the herd. He felt a man's bleak helplessness helpless-ness in that moment, swept on by the wild rush of the cattle's overwhelming over-whelming numbers. There was no chance now for Die thing he had hoped. Eight or ten men might have turned them and got them milling. mill-ing. One alone could do nothing at aU. The lightning's quickened flashes blinded him; its thunder made a bursting pressure in his ears. And then he thought they had collided head on with a solid pillar ot white fire. His horse recoiled and squatted squat-ted as if hit Its heart pounded beneath be-neath his leg. His own body had gone numb and slock. Instinct made him lock his hands on the saddle horn, bis eyes wholly blind from that vivid whiteness, while he was aware of a strange dead hush and a smell ot burned powder and hot ash. How long that daze lasted he couldn't tell afterward. He was moving. The cattle were around him. A waterfall had opened over his head. With the rain there was no more lightning; only the steady downpour iUnl lurrtflrl t Vt d ftnmriA anlk t . . t. Vtmi iui nv mi auititsw veal ui v H A and slick. It slowed the longhorns. Working out ot them, he could hear their hoofs slap the mud as they lumbered on, at a walk now, but in their stubborn, relentless way. He reached the edge and rodt hunched over, letting time pan. The warm rain soaked through to his skin. Steam rose trom his laboring horse. Sound was his only guide Off in the dark he could hear the longhorns come almost to a stop, and then, scary from their first stampeding fright, they would bolt heavily Into a short run. lit dido'l try to turn them. Better wait until dawn. In the dragging hours their runs became shorter. The rain stopped; a little light began to show his world. It was suddenly as if fatigue had hit the cattle on their bony heada. They seemed to halt between one step and another, with only their panting breath rising and falling over the dark mass. He let them rest while daylight came on, until he could estimatt four or five hundred In this bunch. They wert as gaunt as wolves trom the night's run. Tongues lolled and their big eyes bulged In their sockets. sock-ets. It would take weeks to get back the pounds they had lost in these few hours. The morning star was up, large and yellow, straight ahead and dawn was green in the sky when he saw the first of other bunches coming out of the hills to the south. There were more along the river, north. He felt better. And as those straggling strag-gling lines converged with his on the flat shelf and he could see men with each one that dread left him. Joe Wheat, Ash Brownstone and Charley Storms were the first to join their cattle in. They rode back. He saw that Charley hadn't stopped for hit pants but had ridden the night in his long-legged underwear. They trailed behind the herd. Farther Far-ther on, when Quarternight and Moonlight Bailey angled In from the river with their strays, he rode up to shape the point with Rebel Joha The herd was growing. Ahead, Neal Good waited with a smaller bunch. Four men were still missing, Gay and Ed Splann, Steve and Tom Arnold. Ar-nold. The longhorns' run had taken them far west, and It was not until after two hours of steady, speechless riding rid-ing that he saw Owl-Head Jackson's camp smoke lift from the Junction of the river and its tributary creek. He searched along the creek'a growth for the trampled part where the herd could cross. Something halted his drifting gaze. He brought it back. An icy coldness crept over his skin. "John," be said and pointed, "I'd better go look." It was a riderless horse. Even from half a mile off he knew by the way the animal was standing, crookedly, crook-edly, with a tired patience, that it had broken a leg. Closer, he saw the saddle under its belly. Its head raised a little as he approached but dropped again. He drew his gun and put the muzzle close behind one pointed ear and felt sick as he pulled the trigger. Dragging tracks led toward the creek. He followed them, steeled against a thing he had looked upon before and yet chilled even by those memories. His shot had brought two riders starting out of the distant river trees near camp. He couldn't tell who they were. Then suddenly his horse snorted, spread its legs and stopped. The trampled swath of creckbottom willow lay beyond the low bank. He looked where the animal's ani-mal's ears pointed and in that first moment felt no shock. All of his senses seemed to have gone dead. In that strangely suspended feeling feel-ing he turned back, fired hit gun In the air and waved the men on from the herd. They loped toward him. When they saw the horse he had shot no one asked for the rider. He said, "It's Tom," and saw their faces, haggard from the night's work, only set a little more. The two from camp were close now, Clay and Splann, hurried on by his second shot It struck him that they didn't look worn out like the rest of the men. Clay pulled in beside be-side him. "Who is it?" He jerked a nod toward the creek. "Over there." Clay rode over and sat there and took his time about coming back. All expression on his full, ruddy face was veiled by an oddly smoothed-out smoothed-out look. He shook his head. "Tough. I'll go in. Lew, and tell Joy." "No." he said, "not yet" Clay's huge body straightened up in the saddle. "Why not?" His voice carried a new power. "There's no use," he said. "Not till afterward. We're too far trom civilization to go in for that kind of a burial. It will have to be here, right now. Let Joy have some other memory. Where's Steve?" In little silence, with his question unanswered, he knew something was coming that had been shaped already In his own mind. Cut he hadn't expected it would come so soon. Then Gay said, "Steve's in camp. I'm going in. This makes a difference, differ-ence, Lew. A big one. You might "Not one bit!" He swung his horse over close. "What you'rt figuring on hasn't happened. You'll take my orders till it does." An outraged sense turned him as bitterly hard as ht had ever felt "What a time you pick!" He backed off, holding tht hot start of Clay's blue tyta. "John." ht said, "you come with me." lit flung a last look at Gay. 'Tht rest of you stay hert." Riding on, out of hearing, Quarter-night Quarter-night growled, "There's a hytoa tor youl" TO BE CONTINUED! |